Only a dev coming out and openly saying what happened between Legion and BfA will convince me that the planned allied race for BfA preorder wasn’t high elves.
Consider this:
- An expansion overall content is defined years in advance
- The concept of allied races was probably defined even before Legion was released (I’d guess the nightborne storyline were a big part in defining it, but not before they had their NPC models done).
- Over the course of Legion, the first allied races were already defined and worked on: nightborne, highmountain, lightforged and ???
- Even lightforged, while introduced late, were seeded at in 8.0 in the Priest/Paladin questline with the Army of the Light and even (fully-covered) space draenei coming with Lothraxion to save Netherlight Temple.
- There was no hint towards void elves during the whole of Legion. Umbric or his followers were not seeded before the void elves were introduced. The entire void elf storyline was completely missing from Legion.
- Also, Steve Danuser said that the void elf concept came very late in the design process, after Alleria’s story proved an internal success. This means void elves were decided on in the late stages of 7.3 patch, the last true content patch of Legion.
- You can also see how late void elves came to be by looking in to their racial crest, that has changed shape and colors multiple times, or in Alleria’s design (that has nothing to do with void elves because it was finished before they were defined as an allied race).
- During Blizzcon 2017, when the allied races slides were shown in the WoW panel, each race has its own “capital” as its background. Except void elves, who were placed in a random Legion world. Telogrus wasn’t even worked on by then, despite being the simplest of the allied race hubs. Blizzard literally cobbled together their hub in less than three months.
- So, which would be the fourth preorder allied race? What race was seeded or hinted all over Legion? High elves, of course.
– It starts with Magus Solgaze in Stormwind’s library during Legion prepatch. She’s there to study something for “the Ranger General” (Vereesa), hinting at the Alleria storyline.
– You also have the Silver Covenant in Dalaran in the prepatch event, but missing from it after the city was teleported to the Broken Shore.
– It also is hinted in the Unethical Adventurers encounter in Highmountain, which contains an Alliance group - with a high elf priest.
– It continues in the Thas’dorah storyline (Magus Solgaze appears in it as well, opening the portal to Niskara).
– When the 7.1 elven armies converge to Suramar, you have blood elves being buddies with the nightborne, hinting at which faction the later would join, while on the Alliance you have night elves and high elves.
– Elisande’s speech clearly places the high elves as their own race separated from blood elves, and to me is the largest hint that they were meant to be the nightborne’s counterpart.
– Vereesa is present for a brief moment in the Nighthold ending questline
– Vereesa and Arator have a proper role in 7.3 patch, searching for Alleria
What I think was really planned was that Alleria would become the leader of the high elves. She probably would have the void powers anyway (hinted way back in WoD), but it would be a personal story rather than a new race idea. By the end of Legion, Alleria’s return would lead the high elves to unite and become playable.
But… Alleria’s story was an internal success and someone probably thought people would like to be play as something like her. They pitched this idea and the higher-ups embraced it. Since the idea was introduced so later, it didn’t have time to mature, so we ended up with this mess of a race that wasn’t properly seeded and had to be fleshed out over the course of a single quick recruitment scenario.
I’d love to know what happened in the meeting that decided void elves would replace high elves as the fourth allied race. I’d also love to see what work, specially concept art, Blizzard had done prior to that change of direction.